[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by paperwhite13

Thank you everyone for the very helpful comments!

Adding to my story

I’ve already exported two epubs and due to some deadline concerns, I’ve skipped the "Map text styles to HTML and CSS tags" step entirely, so it’s all a bunch of <p class="...">.

<div>s only actually come up on two pages as simple class="Basic-Text-Frame" and as nested divs where footnotes/endnotes appear

<div class="_idFootnotes">
<div id="footnote-154" class="_idFootnote" epub:type="footnote">

There are no <div class="para">s, fortunately

I could go back to InDesign and map the text styles properly, but I've made some edits in the epub directly, so I’d rather make the changes here, and I guess that’s what I was asking in the first place -- if it’s possible to change the relevant p classes to h1, h2 etc.

I am fairly competent with regex, that’s one of the boons of using InDesign for so long

I am forced to use embedded (unencrypted) fonts, that’s my publisher’s request. A couple of readers show the document very nicely, fonts and drop caps included -- Calibre Viewer, Lithium on Android--, while others don’t -- FB Reader, KO Reader on my Kindle, SumatraPDF (the latter doesn’t show *any* formatting at all, which is a little worrying)

I have to say I am less concerned with accessibility at the moment (there are almost no rules or laws to support it in my region and ebook market is shrinking anyway here), and more with wider compatibility, although I understand they go hand in hand. I don’t want to pick up bad habits, of course, but if using <em> everywhere instead of <i> or <span class="italic"> gets me wider compatibility, that’s what I'm after at the moment, even if in some places italic would be semantically correct instead of emphasis.

I usually use a dinkus (* * *) for a section break, what would the semantically correct way to tag this? The little accessibility reading I've done suggests mapping this to <hr>, which would explain why many ebooks I've read have both a horizontal line, and a fleuron -- which I find a little annoying, strictly from a presentation point

Thank you everyone again!

I hope you didnt make the footnotes some dinky little 1 tiny character to have to try to find where to press on the screen. That is really bad form. One way to do it that works well is to make the tap zone the word and the footnote symbol. I like this... last word[*] That makes it a lot easier to tap. And you do not use any sort of subletting. As for the footnotes/endnotes, do the same thin in reverse and do not make them up against the margin. Use at least a 1.5em L/R margin.

<p class="somereallyuselessclass"> should be just <p>. Your Basic-Text-Frame should be changed for a <blockquote>. * * * for a section break looks like you don't have a clue how to do it so it looks good.

What embedded fonts are you using/ Most will not work well on an eInk Reader and on a Kindle will never be seen by most Kindle users who read your book. The drop cap has to go as it will not work in too many cases. I bet on my Kobo it will be a fail given the settings I like to read with.

As to the section break, you need to use <hr.transition> for accessibility. The following code works well.

hr.transition {
  margin-top: 0.9em;
  margin-right: 40%;
  margin-bottom: 0.9em;
  margin-left: 40%;
  border-top: 2px solid;
}

And you do not need to go back to InDesign to fix any of this. You can do it in calibre and/or Sigil much easier.

Do not forget to have an NCX ToC.